A new year often comes with the innate desire to grow towards being the best you can be.
We see an opportunity to start afresh, to make things right, and to improve the quality of our lives by our actions.
A new year presents us with another chance to start on the right footing and see how this goes as we continue with the year.
However, without proper goal setting and structures to help you achieve these goals, you will make little progress toward becoming the person you want to be.
I want to help you identify what goals you need to set that you can achieve in 2025. Before then though, I wrote this post here to help you know how to set goals you can achieve in 2025. You can consider reading it too to help you make and implement your goals.
So, what kind of goals will help you have the greatest growth and impact as a Christian in 2025?
I’ve grouped these goals into 5 categories to help you identify and capture a goal or two in each category as you begin the new year.
I want to help you grow holistically in every area of your life as a child of God.
Let’s get into each of these categories.
1. Spiritual Goals
Spiritual goals are your most important goals as you begin the new year.
Spiritual goals set the pace and provide the right foundation on which the other goals will rest.
If you miss it here, you may achieve very little if any going forward, at least from God’s perspective.
Spiritual goals help you maintain perspective in a world of distractions and voices pulling you in many directions.
Spiritual goals help us keep our feet firmly on the ground, not being moved by every scheme and trend.
What spiritual goals will you set as a child of God to help you move the needle in 2025?
Every year, I set a goal to read and finish reading through the Bible. God has graciously enabled me to fulfill this for the last 17 years. I’m going to start my 18th round in January 2025.
Have you been wondering how you can read the Bible cover to cover? Would you like to know how to read the Bible and finish in 2025? I’ve written all about this in this blog post here. I trust the post will be helpful.
Journaling is part of my spiritual goals. I journal after reading God’s Word to capture on paper what I’m learning as well as tidbits of my life.
Journaling helps me articulate my walk with God.
I also set a goal to pray each day. Our prayer time with my husband every morning is a constant. My personal prayer is what I keep trusting God to engage in consistently every day. I miss a few days but I trust that I’ll do much better in the new year.
I have a fasting goal each week. My husband and I fast once a week. Fasting with my husband offers me a helpful accountability structure especially considering that fasting isn’t easy.
I also keep working on memorizing a portion of Scripture, biting away at it a verse or less every morning after my Quiet Time and then reviewing the portion previously memorized.
These are my daily spiritual goals that I keep working on to ensure I’m growing in my faith.
They have moved the needle for me year after year, causing me to deepen my faith in God, have wisdom for living, and fruitfully minister to others.
These are goals you can make part of your daily and weekly routine. I’m certain God will work through them to transform your life too.
Let me summarize them before we go to the next point:
Bible Reading and Meditation (Quiet Time or personal devotion)
Personal prayer
Daily devotional journaling
Scripture memory
Fasting
These goals may seem many and overwhelming. They are not. You can do all four (the first four) in an hour or less, depending on the time you have set aside for your devotion. You can then fast with the frequency you choose.
2. Relationship Goals
Human beings are relational. We thrive on relationships. We must therefore be intentional in nurturing relationships.
Setting goals to nurture relationships can help us be even more fruitful and a blessing to others.
My reading of the Scriptures helps me understand that everything will pass away and we will take nothing out of this world.
People will endure forever, either in heaven or in hell. Those in heaven will experience eternal life and those in hell eternal damnation-the second death.
Any wise person wants to invest in what will last forever-people. This is why setting relationship goals is your second most important goal.
I’ve deliberately chosen to be part of a church community in our town. I understand I need these people. They also need me.
I’ve taken another step of actively engaging in smaller groups that nurture bonding and fellowship such as our neighborhood Bible study, small women’s group, and the discipleship wing of the church.
These smaller groups especially, help me connect with individuals and build relationships.
The church is a body, the body of Christ. We cannot do without one another. This is why you must trust God to help you be part of a community of believers to nurture relationships. Let this be part of your 2025 goal.
Another goal I intend to make is to trust the Lord to have a fortnight-bonding session with each of my daughters.
In case you’re wondering why my husband is not included in this goal, it is because we have the privilege of spending our fasting day together. We pray, talk, reflect, argue, agree, sometimes agree to disagree lol, pray some more, and continue bonding the entire day.
We often set aside time for a tea or coffee date. Our time together on our prayer day though, helps us to work towards connecting and being on the same page with most of the issues at hand.
If you are married, you may want to set a relationship goal with your spouse to nurture this key relationship, the second in significance after your relationship with God.
I hope to continue intentionally connecting with my parents who live about 7 hours’ drive away from where we live.
Summarily, set relational goals with members of your household, close family members, and the church.
You don’t have to set many goals around this. You might even already be part of an active church community.
Identify one that you need to work on. Focus your energy on that one and then move to another goal next year.
3. Personal Growth Goals
It is God’s will that we keep growing. Consider these verses:
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.” (2Pet.3:18)
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Phil.3:12)
Growing is part of life. If we stop growing, we will either stagnate or die. None of these states will help us to be fruitful, accomplishing more for the glory of God.
Our spiritual goals represent the greatest personal growth goals.
By implementing the spiritual goals we identified and talked about earlier, you will experience tremendous personal growth.
However, God has not placed us on this earth alone. He has placed us in a world with other people.
He has not endowed us with the ability to take care of all that we need or have the skills to do that. He has gifted each of us differently.
Which means, we need others to thrive. We must learn from others if we want to be impactful.
Learning from others not only equips us with what we need to achieve more but also shortens our learning curve concerning our problem-solving capabilities. We gain more wisdom to live life to the full.
This is why you need to set a goal or two to grow in what God has called you to do at a personal level.
The first thing I’ve trusted God to do is read books. For a long time, as a busy work-from-home homemaker, I have set a goal to read a chapter of a book each day.
This is a goal that has helped me read and finish books. This may look slow but it does work. You are basically accomplishing a reading goal by breaking it down into a small chewable bite-sized goal.
Listening to content such as helpful podcasts will stimulate you to wholesome thinking and challenge you to grow.
Intentionally consuming content you know will help you take the right direction of growth is a helpful goal.
I listen to podcasts when I’m alone doing chores or cooking. These have helped me grow in my relationship with God, with others, and what I do.
I must admit that some motivational content can be helpful. However, consuming this kind of content continually won’t help you accomplish growth goals. I think you should significantly reduce the time you listen to or watch such content. This applies to entertainment too unless it is purposeful such as enhancing bonding with family.
Setting personal goals also means setting goals of exercise, diet, managing your personal space, etc.
I have set an exercise goal that doubles up as my personal prayer time. Connecting these two was the best decision I ever made.
I pray as I walk down, then up a hillside for exercise and prayer.
What about setting goals for healthy living and acquiring a skill or two to enhance your productivity?
One of the skills I hope to horn in as a homemaker in the new year is to learn how to make fermented foods such as sauerkraut. I’ll be learning a skill and accomplishing the goal of healthy living for my family by serving them nutritious meals.
I am soon writing a post in which I will give several skill ideas to pick from if you feel short on skill ideas. Even if you don’t find one you resonate with, I hope the post will inspire you to identify a skill you might want to learn.
I hope setting these goals will help you grow at a personal level which leads us to the next point that is closely related to this one.
4. Work/ Vocation related goals
These goals will equip you to be a better woman, wife, and, or, mother, or a more fruitful worker in the workplace if you work outside the home.
We live in an ever-changing society. Things tend to be done differently in every generation.
AI, for instance, has infiltrated the online and workplaces. Unless we keep learning, we will be rendered irrelevant in our workplaces.
As a work-from-home mom, I’ve had to learn how to navigate the online space on a budget.
I’ve learned several skills. From building a website to editing videos and pictures to writing to marketing… I’ve had to learn to minister effectively in this time and generation.
I’m still investing in skills to help me grow in this online space where I run part of the ministry.
Have you identified a skill or two to help you be more fruitful in what God has called you to do?
If you have, go ahead and begin to break down how you intend to learn and acquire the skill in doable timeframes, one skill at a time.
If you haven’t, prayerfully identify what will move the needle the most in your career, vocation, or work. Now work towards acquiring the skills you need to help you achieve this goal in the new year.
In these tough economic times, I’m so grateful that we have free courses to learn what we need to learn.
Most of the skills I’ve acquired have been through free information online.
Keeping yourself updated with general knowledge and new trends in your niche as a homemaker or working woman is another way to grow.
You don’t acquire this knowledge in vain. You acquire it to have a greater impact in helping people.
For instance, learning all I could about meal prepping and adopting a prepping style that I resonate with helps me save time as a homemaker.
5. Long-term Goals
We set long-term goals and then break them down into bite-sized goals we can attain each year towards achieving a long-term goal.
I’m referring to goals that will take at least a year or more to achieve.
This could be a goal you’ve set to buy a certain kitchen gadget, build/ buy a home, retire from a corporate job, finish paying a student loan, etc.
The goal you set each year should chip away at this bigger goal to eventually achieve it within a given timeframe.
I recently had a little pity party telling my daughter I was achieving nothing financially due to our hard economic times.
I believe God used her to remind me of the things God had done through the little financial goals I would set every month. I bought my freezer after saving for a year. The downpayment I needed to publish my book was done through my savings. My blender/grinder, dishes, meat grinder… were all acquired through savings.
What “big” goal do you want to achieve?
Prayerfully write it down then start planning towards how to achieve it. God can even surprise you by miraculously providing what you need!
When I began my cooking channel on YouTube, we had just moved into our home. The home wasn’t complete. The kitchen still needed a fortune to get it to a good place.
God moved the heart of a dear relative to give towards its completion. God miraculously intervened, helping us achieve this goal.
What long-term goals do you want to achieve? Start working towards them by setting smaller weekly or monthly goals.
Remember, don’t look for results after a month or two. Whether you see the needle moving or not, keep working towards achieving your goals. The needle is moving!
Evaluate the achievements you’ve made at the end of the year. This won’t be easy but keep at it throughout the year. You won’t regret this.
Recommended:
Why Rising up Early is Biblical: Tracking the Proverbs 31 Woman Series
7 Reasons Why you Need to Rise up Early: Tracking the Proverbs 31 Woman Series
7 Rhythms and Routines of the Noble Woman: Tracking the Proverbs 31 Woman Series
Are there Cracks in your Spiritual Foundation? 4 Reasons Why your Spiritual Foundation is Weak
6 Components of our Spiritual Foundation